There, in centuries long passed, had flamed the wild volcano, lifting up its beacon-tower of flame over the untravelled seas of the far south. There had poured the torrent of the red lava; there had heaved and panted the earthquake ere the fire burst forth; there, perhaps, from the depth of the ocean, had been hurled up, in the last fierce struggle which burst the gates of the prison-house, and set free the raging spirit of the flame, the mighty masses of rock piled upon rock, precipice above precipice, coral and lava, limestone and basalt, the floorwork of the waters mingling in rifted masses with the barriers that hemmed it in, and all cemented together by a stream of manifold materials fused in the internal fire. Towering up in wild, irregular walls, assuming strange shapes, but everywhere gigantic in size, the crags of lava surrounded a vast, profound basin, the crater of the extinct volcano. Precipice upon precipice, jagged rock rising beside jagged rock, formed the ramparts and the embrasures of the desert fortress; and the eye of the wanderer, as he looked down, caught suddenly a scene the most opposite, in the hollow space below, where soft green turf, of the richest verdure, carpeted the bosom of the cavity, till it reached the brink of the deep dark lake that filled up half the expanse. Opposite, and surrounding about three-quarters of the lake, rose precipitous cliffs of pure white coral, some seventy or eighty feet in height, looking down into, and reflected from the waters; and, as if to make them harmonise with the solemn gloom of that still tarn, every here and there a large white bird skimmed over the waves, and carried a line of light along with it. There was something which moved, too, under the nearest clump of tall trees, which were scattered wide apart over the carpet of verdure; but a mass of rock, which rolled down from the wanderer's foot, scared the creature which had caught his eye, and its wild and enormous bounds showed him in an instant that it was not, as he had fancied and feared, a human being like himself. He had but little cause to fear. Never had the spot been visited by anything in the form of a man, unless it were the wildest and lowest of the race--the Australian savage--and that but rarely, if at all. Amidst the solitary peaks of Mount Gambier he stood alone; perhaps the first since the creation who ever set a footstep there. As he gazed towards the west, the sun sank, and a greenish shade spread over the blue. He cast his eyes over the land through which he had lately passed: it was all one gray, indistinct mass. He looked down into the vast hollow of the hills; the colouring had suddenly faded, and darkness filled the chasm. But then, as if in compensation, the moment after came forth the stars, large and lustrous, bursting forth all at once, and spangling both the bosom of the heaven and the deep waters of the lake below.